A gospel manuscript that depicts the telegraph

Yes, there is indeed a gospel manuscript which has a picture of a set of telegraph poles, running from Constantinople to “Babylon” — i.e. Baghdad. Adam McCollum has written a fascinating post on it at the HMML blog. There doesn’t seem to be a way to link to specific articles, but it’s here.

The manuscript is a Syriac manuscript, written in 1867 in the Ottoman empire. The picture labels all the bits — the poles, the wires, etc.

Adam also outlines how the telegraph came to run through the Ottoman lands (because our people wanted to be able to telegraph to India, basically).